"What is your answer? Think before you speak, for on your answer must depend your future position in my house."
Cora was silent for a few moments.
"Sir," she began at length, "you are a just man, at least, and you will not refuse to hear and consider my reasons for seclusion."
"I will consider nothing! I know them as well as you do. Morbid sensitiveness about your peculiar position; morbid dread of facing the world; morbid love of indulging in melancholy. And I will have none of it! None of it! I will be obeyed, and you shall go out into society, or else—"
"'Or else' what will be the alternative, sir?"
"You leave my house! I will have no rebel in my family!"
Had Cora followed the impulse of her proud and outraged spirit, she would have walked out of the library, gone to her room, put on her bonnet and cloak, and left the house, leaving all her goods to be sent after her; but the girl thought of her poor, gentle, suffering grandmother, and bore the insult.
"Sir," she said, with patient dignity, "do you think that it would have been decorous, under the peculiar circumstances, for me to appear in public, and especially at a state dinner at the executive mansion?"
"Madam, I instructed you to accept that invitation and to attend that dinner! Do you dare to hint that I would counsel you to any indecorous act?"
"No, sir; certainly not, if you had stopped to think of it; but weightier matters occupied your mind, no doubt."